1966 when I was 12 years old. Flew from San Diego to Washington DC on a 707 to visit relatives for a couple of weeks.
Not until grad school. Going to a conference. First conference, first paper accepted, first presentation.
[Landed at the airport, met up with some other people going to the conference which was a ways off. Ended up in the back seat of a car with R and A of RSA. Had already done some email exchanges with R on a non-encryption problem so that was good to meet him in real life. Arpanet!]
OTOH, my kids went on their first flights as wee infants. Completely different world for them.
June, 1975. The Navy flew me and 8 others from Seattle to San Diego for boot camp. That was the only free flight the Navy ever gave me, I had to pay for the rest.
1978 at age three. The flight was Cleveland - Dallas - Athens - Tehran. I was invited up to the flight deck for just about every leg (during the flight, as you could in those days!) and had to be dragged back to my seat. One of my earliest permanent memories and sparked my love for aviation that persists to this day.
Wasn’t there another thread just like this one?
I was very young, less than 2 years old, maybe less than 1. According to my mother it was an Allegheny Airlines flight and I cried the whole time. Karma has more than balanced the score in flights I took as an adult with babies crying constantly. My kids still have a debt to repay.
My first flight by myself was in 1965, when I was 18 and working for the State of Alaska as part of a survey crew. I flew to Kotzebue, AK from Anchorage on a Super Constellation. Very exciting.
1978, I was almost 8. Toronto to Orlando, went to Disney World.
- I was 10. We flew from Manchester (UK) to Majorca (Spain) on our first foreign package holiday. These were just coming into reach for ordinary families. I don’t remember the flight but I remember the resort - a 6 story hotel, all rooms with balconies overlooking an enormous pool, and the first restaurant I had ever been to where there was a buffet and you could whatever and however much you wanted. Looking back, I would be very sniffy about this tacky resort now but as a 10 year old I thought it was paradise on earth.
2003 – I was 23 years old, living in Raleigh, NC at the time, and was in a long distance internet relationship with a woman in Seattle. We decided why don’t I fly out there to meet her over my fall break. So I did, we spent a few days together, and, well, the relationship didn’t work out. At least not romantically; we are still friends to this day.
Regarding the actual experience of flying: When I was a kid my family would drive from North Carolina to Wisconsin to visit my grandparents every other summer. That road trip took the better part of two days. So it completely blew my mind that the first leg from Raleigh to Chicago only took two hours.
I started this one last year:
How often did you fly as a child? - In My Humble Opinion - Straight Dope Message Board
I’m told that I was with my parents on flights to and from Canada, or something like that, at around age 2, too early to recall.
My first flight was in 1980, I was 14. Flew from Shreveport to Atlanta and then onto Boston on Delta. A week later made the return trip.
Second trip was in 1984, and I was 19, when Southwest was beginning its expansion and crazy promotions, some friends and I flew from Dallas Love Field to Chicago Midway and back on a Saturday for $18 round trip, IIRC. We spent about 6-7 hours bopping around downtown Chicago for the day.
My first flight was when I was 19. Flew into Sand Diego to report to boot camp. Flew quite frequently while in the service. Less so after getting out.
Pfft!
I only took private jets as a child.
Maybe 11ish, in the mid-80s. Flew with my mom to visit my grandparents in Florida.
18 – New Orleans to Chicago, ultimately ending up at Great Lakes Naval Training Center.
The trip home was my first time on an intercity bus.
I was 17. Senior year in high school; Dad took me to several college visits, but then he had a work gathering to go to near the last college, so I flew home.
Jet to DCA, then a puddle-jumper to home. This was back when the Hari Krishnas and their ilk infested airports, and I was basically accosted multiple times in a row as I exited the jetway into DCA.
Brushed off the first couple of them, then decided to get cute and pretend I didn’t speak English.
Her French was as good as mine!! I wound up giving her 50 cents, I think.
Had to have been about 11 or 12, so 1979 or 1980, flying from Lubbock, TX, to Houston, going to visit family in Lake Charles, LA. Had been up in private planes a couple times when much younger, my natural father ran an avionics shop in Corpus Christi, and took me up in client planes when testing them.
November 1961, one week before my tenth birthday, from Idewild Airport in NY (now JFK) to Leopoldville (now Kinshasha) in the Congo.
Pan Am 707 first class, paid for by the UN. With my mother and brother to meet my father who had been there a few months.
Related thread, with my answer:
(said flight would have been @ Summer of 1982)